


turn, turn, turn

by thankyouturtle



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-23
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-08 08:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/441316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankyouturtle/pseuds/thankyouturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pink backpack under Veronica's bed is less of a Pandora's box than she remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	turn, turn, turn

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this _years_ ago and recently rediscovered it on my computer in a forgotten folder. I wrote other VMars fic, but I think it's fair to say that this is the only one that comes anywhere near to standing the test of time. At least, it's not embarrassing for me to reread it.

The moving truck is arriving in two hours but Veronica has purposefully left herself time for this last task. It’s the only thing to go through, and no, it’s not going to take two hours, but this isn’t something that Veronica wants to rush - the small pink backpack is full of sad things, hidden beneath her bed in case she ever forgot what really needed to be remembered. But Veronica knows, now, that nothing truly important can ever be forgotten, and these are the last parts of her life that need to be sorted out before she can really, truly, finally move on.

She opens the bag slowly, cautiously fingering each object as she pulls them out. As she has suspected, it’s far less of a Pandora’s box than it was the last time she forced her way through it. She doesn’t really have to look at anything to know what it is, but she does anyway, ticking each one off her mental list as she sees it.

_Item: one napkin, bright white, soft, smeared with lip gloss, pale pink._ Her last date with Duncan before he broke her heart for the first time. She hadn’t known, then, that it was their last date; neither of them had. He’d taken her to a fancy restaurant to eat where the waiter had called him “sir” and she’d been so scared of embarrassing herself, or him, by spilling food down her front that she’d actually tucked the napkin into her top. And then she had walked out the restaurant, still wearing it. She’d been mortified at the time, but now she chuckles, and thinks that it’s probably a story worth sharing. Not to Wallace, though; he’d never let her hear the end of it.

_Item: memory stick, one gigabyte, metallic green_. Not too long after Beaver had – well, after Beaver, Veronica had gone back up to the rooftop to try and make sense of it all, to try and find some kind of resolution and instead found the memory stick shining in the Neptune sun, not two feet from the last place anybody had ever seen Cassidy alive. She’d picked it up, almost mechanically, and taken to home with her to see what was on it and maybe, if necessary, to give it to the police as evidence. But there’d been something wrong with it, something broken on the inside so that it just wouldn’t work properly. She’d kept it, half-hoping that one day she’d figure out how to repair it, but Veronica realises that that’s just wishful thinking and chucks it into her rubbish bin. Not even she can fix everything.

_Item: thumb-sized, glass lily._ A gift from Lilly, of course. “So you don’t forget me,” she’d explained. Her and Duncan had been going on a month-long family trip and Veronica hadn’t wanted them to go; she missed Lilly if they were apart for more than a day and she couldn’t even begin to imagine how boring a whole month would be without her best friend. After Lilly’s death the tiny fragile flower had caused Veronica too much pain to keep it displayed on her desk. But now she recalls that all plants need light, and she wraps it carefully in the napkin and pushes it deep into her pocket, to keep it safe until she finds it a new home in her new house.

_Item: pair of baby bootees, pink, decorated with white pompoms_. She’d bought them for Duncan’s baby, the second time he broke her heart (although on reflection, she was rather used to having her heart broken by then; she had so much scar tissue she was surprised the hurt had even registered.) She’d meant the bootees as a goodbye present, but had decided at the last minute that that would be far too impersonal and had given him nothing, instead. Now she wonders if there isn’t perhaps someone out there who needs them (this is Neptune, after all) and resolves to drop them into a charity box later that day.

_Item: coffee mug, chipped_. It had been Veronica’s favourite vessel as a kid – the only one she was allowed to drink out of that wasn’t plastic. Veronica’s fingers trace the faded writing on one side. ‘Out of this world’ it says; Marvin the Martian glares up at her, daring her to remember. It’s not hard; she’d been six, maybe, and had woken up thirsty. She’d had her Marvin mug by her bed full of water, as usual, but when she’d drained it she’d decided she needed more and tiptoed from her room towards the bathroom, coffee mug in hands. She was probably half way there when she heard a yell, which gave her such a fright she dropped Marvin and turned towards the noise. Innately curious even then, Veronica had followed the noise past the bathroom and towards the living room, where it had taken her a full five seconds to realise it was her mother yelling, as angry as she’d been the day she caught Veronica putting crayons in the clothes dryer. Only this time she was yelling at Veronica’s father, who stood passively, even sadly, before the torrent of words. Veronica had turned tails and fled, stopping only to retrieve Marvin before diving into bed, pulling her covers over her head and trying to pretend the whole thing had never happened.

She’d realised the next morning that it was going to be hard to pretend it had never happened with Marvin looking at her with a crack in his head. The mug had chipped the night before when she’d dropped it; an ugly reminder of something she wanted to forget. So she’d put it in her old backpack, the one she’d used at kindergarten, and pushed it under her bed so she didn’t have to see it…

Veronica stands up, stretches, just as Keith comes in. “I left the kettle out on purpose so we could have a coffee before we left, but I’ve just realised that I neglected to leave out any cups,” he says, amusement in his eyes.

Veronica waves Marvin at him. “That’s OK,” she tells him, “I don’t mind sharing.”

_Item: wound, healed._


End file.
